Police
Cops (1989) ruined america, taught us to trust these ass holes and they royally fucked us over.
Not making light of everything before 1989, but even after all that shit, the show painted them in a decent enough light to where people spill their guts and trust them, just because they have a uniform and they took full advantage of us.
Police propaganda goes way back before Cops (1989). Dragnet started in 1951 and inspired dozens of police procedurals that made cops look like street smart scientists who studied at the intersection of crime and humanity. In reality they are just a disappointment. ACAB
I wasn’t alive during that, but I remember the cop propaganda from the 90s well.
Institutions. Courts. Media. Religion. Law Enforcement. Politicians.
The institutions are captured. The courts, media, and politicians are corrupt. Bought and paid for. Law Enforcement are just class traitors. The enforcement arm of Capital. Protecting the interests of the ruling class and taking a bludgeon to the people. Religion is a tool of control. Used to control the ignorant and guide their ire.
Idk I’m starting to think dystopia began when we figured out agriculture
Most life eats other life to live. It’s been a bad time from the very beginning.
When aristocracy discovered mercantilism and mutilated it into capitalism.
Jk Rowling. She was (I think) the only billionaire to ever debillonaire themselves without dying (i.e., she donated so much wealth to charity that she was no longer a billionaire).
But then she decided to dedicate herself to making trans people’s lives miserable…
I’m curious which charities she was donating to before she turned into a massive cunt. Cause all she donates to now are hate groups.
Good question, I never actually looked into it. According to her Wikipedia page:
She established the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, and co-founded the charity Lumos in 2005. Rowling’s philanthropy centres on medical causes and supporting at-risk women and children. In 2025, Forbes estimated that Rowling’s charitable giving exceeded US$200 million. She has also donated to Britain’s Labour Party, and opposed Scottish independence and Brexit.
Can she just die already? I normally don’t wish death on anyone. Just people that do extremely evil things.
Apple, and a number of the other big tech companies as well. Shit used to be easy to use, repair, customize to your liking, etc.
Now they don’t want you to be able to fix a damn thing, plus all too many services and features and stuff have gone to the subscription model.
Fuck all with that, give us our stuff back and let us just use what we paid for.
Right To Repair!
You have to go back like 30 years to get to a pro-repair Apple
More or less yeah. Though back around 2013 or so, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by how they designed their Mac AIO desktops, they actually were somewhat repair tech friendly.
The front glass was magnetically attached, so it only took a suction cup or two to start disassembly, and basic screwdrivers to remove the screen and get access to the motherboard, hard drive, RAM, DVD drive, etc.
And yes you could replace or upgrade parts as necessary, none of this newer soldered on storage shit they do these days.
I’ve lost a lot of respect for companies that solder on important parts that should rightfully be fairly easy to replace or upgrade.
Plus, now the big companies have taken to forcing encryption on the storage devices, effectively locking the drive to the system. Well isn’t that just cute for the backup operator that’s trying to recover your late grandmother’s family photos…
Yeah it’s pretty bleak, although there have been some moves towards right to repair in recent years.
Respecting companies is always a bit fraught though. Even the ones you like are only doing it to profit off of your niche. It’s thanks to us that they even have a profitable niche to serve
The original iMac G5 was designed to be repairable by the customer. You could even call Apple support and do free part exchanges under warranty.
The video game industry. (Indie games are on fire lately, though.)
AA is where it’s at now. There’s still insanely good games coming out, there just not by companies like EA and Activision anymore.
In some ways I think the good development studios are the same size they’ve always been, it’s just that a new class of mainstream games has risen to profit on the masses. If you ignore those, it’s not so bad. At least not until one of the AAA publishers gets their hands on them to ruin the IP and layoff the original devs
A lot of AA studios have been cramming in a ton of microtransactions still, whereas indie is mostly devoid of it, but it definitely gets a lot better the more A’s you remove.
A certain elongated muskrat comes to mind. I love space so the thought of a reusable rocket to make space affordable was awesome. I also believe that electric cars are the future, and tesla did make pretty good charging standard and help to “prove” the concept. But now I just hope he somehow winds up dirt poor, and irrelevant. Just oh, my, god
Google. Do no evil
Nintendo.
Things got worse once Bowser got ahold of the American castle.
The fun dissolved with Iwata and Reggie gone.
The line to far for me was their retroactive bs patents used to attack Palworld. It’s one thing to be strict on your own systems, but another to do it to others. 80s Nintendo is back and possibly worse than before.
It wasn’t Bowser, it was the finance guys that were placed at the head of the company after Satoru Iwata’s death.
I haven’t played with a switch very much but I think the joysticks are worse than what they made for GameCube. I am under the impression that switch has what amounts to a directional pad underneath a joystick. Like that Gameboy peripheral with the lights, magnifier, and joystick that clips over the D pad. The joystick is there on the switch but output is only an analog 8 directions.
Pardon me if I’m wrong here but what I see with Nintendo is them making bad hardware. I know it’s made for kids but even they deserve better. The switch version of any big AAA game that got a switch port is generally really really dumbed down and looks and runs like garbage. I can’t wait to hear about Cyberpunk 2077 looking and running like garbage again. 5 years after it came out.
The joy cons are legitimately awful to use. The buttons are like needles after a while and the sticks just feel weird on my thumbs. What’s weird is that the switch lite fixed both of those problems. (None of this is about drift lol which is awful and another problem)
None of this is about switch 2. Idk anything about it.
Google. It was once a good search engine. Now I find myself getting only the most irrelevant results based on my keywords and more often than not an advanced search turns up nothing of value
Corey Doctorow’s podcast Understood: Who broke the internet? does an amazing job of explaining this. It’s only like 5 episodes and worth everyone’s time.
The United States government and the United States citizens.
Growing up I was taught about all these checks and balances. How the government is slow and that’s good because it makes sure people get what they really want. Come to find out in just one presidential term, this one guy just executes executive orders left and right and just gets things done.
I thought U.S citizens would vote in their best interests but they would glady vote for a facist who’s against their best wishes.
The worshipping of the self-made man and entrepreneurship in popular American culture
I think I was just too young and fashionable, maybe I was one of those guys that saw themselves as a “temporarily embarrassed billionaire”… then got old enough to see through the nonsense
Republicans. When I was a child, slogans like “fiscally responsible”, “family values”, “smaller government “ sounded like good things. Republicans always claimed the moral high ground. But they’ve spent my entire adult life proving it as manipulative bullshit for personal greed and power, holding themselves above the law, the worst in humanity, rising to our current flirt with fascism.
Elon. Turns out he was always a conman and liar.
At one point, between 2021-2022 I had thought absolutely nothing of him and just thought of him as an eccentric rich person. Even wanted one of his “The Boring Company” flamethrowers because who wouldn’t want a flamethrower? Then comes the election and out comes his true colours. Now there’s no change in hell I’d support him.
So many people sabotage themselves by being bad people and going mask off.
I thought he was a great guy when he loaned those solar panels to the hospital in Puerto Rico. Then he bought Twitter and started firing employees, banning reporters, blocking the api so researchers couldn’t have access. This was the start for me. Jerk has only gotten worse.
Grown ups.
Christianity and the Democratic Party.
When did any religion deserve respect?
Sure, respect the person (to a point), but not the belief in fairytales
Same goes for any superstitious woo
Things are different when you’re raised in it.
Indoctrination is fucked
If people waited until kids were actually capable of reasoned thought before bringing up the idea of religion, it’d die out within a generation
Yup.
That’s a funny way of saying indoctrinated.
Whether you agree with religion or not, religious groups do a lot of good in the world on a daily basis.
They do good despite their superstition, not because of it
They’d be just as capable of doing good things without their invisible sky-daddy
Religious groups also do horrific things every day.
Religion is used to justify the worst things
People will always find a way to excuse their shitty behaviour, but religion gets something of a free pass because too many people want their cosmic insurance policy, so they forgive the evils of religion
How do you know any of them would do any of the good things they do without religion guiding them?
Non religious groups do horrific things every day.
Numerous things are used to justify atrocities including our global economic structures, education systems, etc.
No matter what people will do horrendous things and justify them however they see fit. Religious people do good and evil because of their faith and they are no different than anyone else doing those things for their own reasons.
they are no different than anyone else doing those things for their own reasons
They are absolutely different, because in some major religions, devotion is rewarded or promised heavily in the afterlife, which creates a great incentive. These people are more likely to become radicalized or extremists, often going out of their way to impose their worldview on others through harassment, aggression, or influence. I’ll point to Mother Theresa, who inflicted so much pain on others when she thought she was doing good, often withholding pain medicine and other treatments. She said suffering is what God intended, and so she did… unto others.
You can respond to my whole comment if you wish for me to respond to you. You didn’t even quote the whole sentence.
Religious people do good and evil because of their faith and they are no different than anyone else doing those things for their own reasons.
They are absolutely different, because in some major religions, devotion is rewarded or promised heavily in the afterlife, which creates a great incentive. These people are more likely to become radicalized or extremists, often going out of their way to impose their worldview on others through harassment, aggression, or influence. I’ll point to Mother Theresa, who inflicted so much pain on others when she thought she was doing good, often withholding pain medicine and other treatments. She said suffering is what God intended, and so she did… unto others.
There you go. You’re more preoccupied with ceremony than substance because your substance has run thin.
They’re dumber, because they believe in the patently absurd
That’s the difference
You refuse to see the similarities and that is your problem. Stay bigoted friend.
Bigotry is hating someone for an aspect of themselves that they can’t change, like their sexuality, their skin colour, where they were born etc.
Religion is a choice
I don’t hate religious people
But I refuse to respect their beliefs any more than I do a flat-earther, or anti-vaxxer
And religious groups and individuals also do a whole lot of destructive, demented and fucked up acts of evil.
So do non religious people. Pretty easy to see the common denominator wouldn’t you say?
I think you’re not taking into account its hierarchical nature founded on unquestioning obedience, and the unearned & inherent facade of trust it has for some people. These tools aren’t available for the non-religious which is very enabling if your goal is to exploit. And exploit they have.
I think your not taking into account the hundreds of religions there are in the world, and making blanket statements about “all religious people” is at best ignorant.
I want to specify that I’m taking about all the dominant religions in the West with known charities like the Salvation Army. I don’t particularly know or care about the Hare Krishna who gather downtown once a year offering free food with an ulterior motive and practically no noticeable social impact for anyone other than themselves, for example.
I don’t think I could talk about all religions in the world, but I can safely talk about major trends and commonalities. That does not make me ignorant.
My point was not to say that non religious people are all saints, but to balance out your previous point where you praised religion without nuance.
Of course the common denominator is people. And it’s pretty easy to see how religion is a powerful tool for these people to do evil, wouldn’t you say?
I never praised religion without nuance, I gave praise where praise was due when the topic is “When has religion ever deserved respect”. Your point is moot because a bad portion of a group does not make the whole group bad, and does not change my point that religious groups do have reasons to be respected.
People doing good is respectable wouldn’t you say?
Sure, but religion arguably does just as bad if not worse in all kinds of areas.
It touches on everything from the warped understanding of the world, to superficial gestures of kindness for loyalty in return, to substituting health care with dangerous consequences, to giving criminals a clear conscience, it promotes hateful group thinking, subjects their followers to paths of radicalization or extremism, it both promotes & is used as a tool for suppression and subjugation of others, etc, etc. Yes, religion can do good, but the underbelly is hideous.
The underbelly of human institutions are generally hideous. This does not change the fact that religious groups do good in the world daily, and that work wouldn’t be done otherwise if we simply removed religion all together.
Well, how about we flip it: why are secular organizations not recognized for the work they do? I mean, why are religious institutions getting all the credit as if they were inherently more virtuous?
The only advantage religion has is its active community that propels initiatives as part of a grand ideal. I don’t think the actual work would go undone if the project had already been established from the overwhelming support of an existing secular community. Helping others is, after all, human nature.
Numerous secular organizations get credit for the work they do. Religious isn’t more virtuous.
Go cry about your feelings elsewhere
Yeah, after they established a reputation and many years of hard work. Religious orgs don’t need to do all that. They show a spiritual symbol and everybody assumes they’re doing the Lord’s work.
Go cry about your feelings elsewhere
I think you got emotional and started projecting. But don’t get confused now and start breaking rule 1.
